


Sense Enough to Lie

by enygmatic



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Doctor/Patient, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 10:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enygmatic/pseuds/enygmatic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doctor Frederick Chilton figures that his best bet of grasping psychiatric fame and glory is to reveal the true Chesapeake Ripper. When honest deduction proves unlikely, he does the next best thing: he <i>creates</i> the Ripper in the image of his favorite patient, Abel Gideon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Honorable Living

**Author's Note:**

  * For [turnofthesentry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/turnofthesentry/gifts).



> This is a progressing story, and thus is subject to warning and label updates. The overall narrative is in honor of Gabbie (turnofthesentry) and her fantastic dedication to the character of Abel Gideon.

“You’ve made incredible strides,” Chilton said, his words dripping approval. The determination of his paternal tone only supported his impulse to clasp Gideon on the shoulder; and while Chilton could easily justify the touching, he was conscious of how his patient might react. He spent so much time, thinking about Abel Gideon, _anticipating_ Abel Gideon. Etching out the darker corners of Abel Gideon within the guiltless canvas of his mind.

“Thanks, Frederick. I'm aiming for the incredible, now and again, glad you noticed. Sets off the monotony.” 

Gideon’s eyes followed Chilton’s movements as the psychiatrist moved out from behind his desk, strolling closer to Gideon’s chair. His vision was only somewhat compromised, a brown cluster of hair falling from its styled cowlick. He couldn’t move his hands; the heavy, cold shackles that locked his wrists to his waist allowed only enough room for his limbs to lounge against his lap. 

Chilton quirked his thinned lips in response as he stood right before Gideon’s seated body, his expression bestowing only mild amusement. Gideon had warmed to him over the months (an experience as gradual as it was fulfilling), but the patient had never fully abandoned that aloof sheen. It now seemed so habitual to his demeanor.

The exceptions that cracked the ice were those moments when Gideon spoke of Doctor Alana Bloom. Every balmy word uttered about her curdled Chilton’s stomach. He often wondered if Abel Gideon somehow _deduced_ as much –- but how? Chilton was confident that his expressions never betrayed his emotions, even if a few times after discussing her, he had caught a cutting smirk on his patient’s face. 

The psychiatrist, standing before his patient, nimbly stroked back that stray lock from Gideon’s forehead. 

A reminder of control, a taunt intertwined with affection. _Now_ it was Doctor Chilton who smirked. Now it was Doctor Chilton who cut and sliced and provoked. 

“Abel, have you been feeling well?” 

“Well enough,” he said, his tongue licking at the terse words. 

“I believe it,” said Chilton, taking a few steps back to lean against his desk. With any other patient, this posture would have been unthinkable; but Abel Gideon was unique to Chilton. Abel Gideon, an inventoried sociopath who had suffered a psychotic and ultimately homicidal breakdown, was a man who quite obviously suffered from a dissociative disorder. His so-called “crime of passion” spoke as much: the reasoning behind his wife’s murder and her family’s murders, the events bubbling up to it all, the immediate emotional fallout – all of that fazed a gray fog for the man. He had disengaged himself from the event, emotional, intellectually. Psychologically. He had dissociated himself. 

And that, Chilton hypothesized, was just the first domino to tip. Abel Gideon doubted his memory, his stability, his rationale and soon –- hoped Chilton –- he would doubt his own identity. 

So when Chilton leaned against the edge of his own desk, his body desperately trying to mimic a casual language, he did so with exact calculation. He wanted Abel to think they were friends. 

Friends trusted each other, after all. Wasn’t that the point of such human connection?

“I believe it because you’ve been quite receptive to treatment, which is no small feat. Astoundingly so, in fact, you are a _model_ patient.” Chilton’s grin widened, the enthusiasm he felt flooded his eyes. “The most fascinating one I’ve ever encountered. Little wonder why your strides have been _so_ incredible, isn’t it?”

Gideon furrowed his brow. His reaction, his emotions tumbled behind his forehead, racing, swirling –- contradicting. If the good doctor was playing a game, he reasoned, then the rules are changing up. Slowly, he nodded, offering the vaguest of commitment. 

“But?” 

Abel Gideon, always the skeptic. 

“ _But_ ,” continued Chilton. “But you haven’t been _flawless_ in recovery, now have you? You think the clearest,” he tapped his own temple, for emphasis. “When you’re at your calmest.”

Gideon sucked in his cheeks, measuring his intakes of breath. He didn't response to the assertion with words, and of his full-grown body it was only his hands that proved talkative: his fingers clenched and unclenched, whispering anxiety over the psychiatric evaluation. Get. To the point. Frederick. White knuckles, flushed knuckles. His gaze dropped from Chilton's face. 

" _And_ ," said the psychiatrist, once he indulged in enough dramatic suspense. "Your coherent memory appears to fluctuate _most_ when you're at odds with your environment. Emotionally." He cleared his throat, buying a handful of moments to throw at an impressive impact. Gideon seemed unmoved, only his hands clenched and unclenched. 

"Your anger distances yourself from some of your frontal lobe cognitive functions, Abel, specifically your memory," pressed Chilton. "You experience a blinding, searing rage -- the kind that cleanses the sufferer from forming connotations with regards to the self, and the self's actions. Which suggests that perhaps the _reason_ why you can't access some of your personal history, retrospectively, is because you've emotionally dissociated yourself from them emotionally. Dissociated yourself, as it were, through the lens of violent, angry, hateful emotions."

"Ah," said Gideon. His hands unclenched, his fingers stretching outwards before folding neatly over his lap. "So -- are you suggesting that any difficulty with the details concerning my past persona is all due to, what, aggressive inclinations?"

"Homicidal tendencies," corrected Chilton.

"Bad vibes," agreed Gideon. His eyes grew round and innocent, his head cocked to the side. " _Very_ bad vibrations."

Chilton rolled his eyes, pulling his shoulders upwards in a matching shrug. He missed the _click_ of Gideon's neurons, the golden logic shining through that veil of pharmaceuticals fed to his brain. His lips pursed, his left eye twitched. A fresh frontier canvased open his mind, opportunity and calculated horror slipping down his spine.

"But, that would mean that -- look, we both know that there's a fair amount of my own history that. I can't really. Unfog. Frederick. And something cause that, as every effect has a cause." Gideon shifted in his chair, an uncomfortable heat wrapping around his waist and thighs. It was an unsettling sensation, like a loss of control. "Do you think I've killed other people? That I got so angry -- homicidal, I suppose -- and I can't recall it?"

Chilton, still midway through his grandiose eye roll, darted his pupils back to Gideon's face. He blinked once, twice, and turned his back on Gideon as he walked back around, assuming a seat at his paper-embroiled desk. 

The few seconds of his turned back hid his wolfish grin, his teeth made sharper at the scent of triumph.

"I hadn't quite considered that implication," lied Chilton, his expression a perfect mimic of pondering solemnity. He faced his patient, the desk between them a polite barrier, a reminder of the social hierarchy: one was a doctor with rising promise, one was a criminal, insane and disgraced. The mechanisms that allowed these respective fates were forged from subtler cogs than the ones Chilton now used to clockwork his patient -- but the outcome was still well-timed. 

"But it's a logical theory," he said, his finger and thumb stroking over his chin. "And I promise you, Abel, I will do everything in my power to unearth those memories. Together, we will investigate your mind and discover _exactly_ what you have done that you so desperately hid from yourself. We will reconstruct whatever it was that caused your mind to respond to such trauma with dissociation. If that's the case." 

And at this, he leaned forward, his eyes devouring Gideon's expression. His voice was careful, coached. Comforting. 

"I will help you remember who you truly are."


	2. Luck is Down.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second session begins, and stakes pitch higher as the intimidation tactics start.

"A crime of passion?" Abel Gideon posed the echo as a question, leaning his chin in the cup of his palm as he watched Frederick Chilton pace around the excess of his ornate office. It was a highly measured pace, his feet moving to a routine that fit the middling of his office. Curious sort of movement, thought Gideon, but his observation didn't dwell on his doctor's eccentricities. A solid week had passed since their last discussion, and Chilton's petitions to bring Gideon _outside_ of the building's interior had thus far failed. The current administrator, while unusually fond of Chilton's ambition and methodology, nevertheless remained skeptical over easing the constraints of Gideon's boundaries. No outside strolls along the institution's grounds, no change of scenery for therapeutic discussions. Whatsoever. Frederick was thus forced to adapt with another session in an intimate space -- and he again choice a particular intimate space, the one he held most dominance over. 

He had been sure to adjust the angling of any security cameras, to create a blind spot in the middle of his office. His pacing moved unseen. 

"Yes -- and one with severe emotional bearing, as it were. You're a surgical man by training and nature, Abel, you are _meticulous._ The bludgeoning of your wife? And her howling mother? And her brothers and father? Oh, goodness, that was _brutal_." He paused his meandering to glance down at the crystal decanter that held his whiskey. Gideon was seated in the same chair he had occupied last time, the one right across from Chilton's desk. "Dare I say -- _savage_ , even." 

A concept he hoped to reward. His finger ran along the rim of a nearby tumbler, his mind racing with potential positive reinforcement. 

"Don't see what's so savage about it. Maybe a little impulsive," said Gideon, his tone heavy with consideration. It was a thought experiment to him, his own past before his infamous psychotic breakdown remained mostly an abstraction. It was the spectre in his brain. 

"I call it savagery compared to your usual artistry, rather," clarified Chilton. With a _clink_ , he took two tumblers in one hand and the decanter in the other. Gideon, noting the noise, turned around to peek at his psychiatrist's antics. Chilton observed his patient's curiosity with precision; he was in the habit of taking consistent notes, mental or otherwise, that steadfastly demonstrated Abel Gideon's behavior. And Gideon, now familiar with Chilton's strategies, felt the attention to be something almost flattering -- not quite as invasive and unrelenting as he once viewed the technique. It was nice to entertain, even if his own entertainment was so hollow. 

But perhaps today would not be such a hollow day. 

"You've got two glasses," remarked Gideon. Chilton praised him for his accuracy. 

"I think you might be deserving of a toast, Abel, though you're free to accuse me of optimism." Chilton sat before his desk, his butt perched on the very end. He set the glasses and the decanter at his side. "Call it a bit of unorthodox encouragement." 

"I'd call it a bit of bribery, actually." 

In all fairness, Gideon had every reason to call it something much worse. He leaned back his head, cocking his gaze up and down Chilton's presented body, noting the easygoing posture. It was fairly theatrical, he thought, this mood performance. Perhaps Doctor Chilton would have made an admirable actor, in another life. Gideon closed his eyes, indulged in a lengthy inhalation, and nodded -- it was an acceptance of this little game between them. And now Gideon consented to play. 

"Bribery? Oh no, no, no, _no_." Chilton held up one hand, deflecting the accusation with a palm. "Bribery would imply some level of _distrust_ , don't you think? And I know we trust each other, Abel." 

His shown palm, easygoing in its apparent defense, reached over and gripped Gideon by his knee. The moment zapped electrical tension -- Gideon froze under the gesture, the heat of Chilton's hand, as the psychiatrist leveled his calculating stare. Every twitch, every hesitance running across Gideon's face was aptly noted; Chilton found the reaction fascinating. Any sociopath, he narrated silently, would find such an invasion of personal space like an affront. But Abel Gideon had a great deal to lose if Chilton found him non-compliant... Hence the crux of Gideon's internal dilemma. 

Chilton thrived in the moments of those sharp, silent sparks. 

"Everything all right?" He asked, giving Abel's knee a gentle squeeze, his fingers gripping in a nearly paternal manner. "Are you uncomfortable?" 

"Should I be?" 

"I'd hope not -- you know how invigorating I find our conversations," Chilton replied. 

_Invigorating._ Even the choice of adjective provoke a sour sensation of unease down Gideon's spine. His cautioned his chin upwards, offering a pose defiant. He wasn't about to exhibit any signs of being intimidated, no matter how close to the bone this psychological game was going to cut. If Frederick assumed he could master a few points by twitching his hand over a knee, then the good doctor had another thing coming. Gideon leaned forward, a careful smile quirking his lips. 

"Can't say I blame you, Doctor. You haven't had anyone like me before, have you?" Gideon poked out the tip of his tongue, wetting the corner of his mouth. It want a taunt unspoken. His own hand slowly eased down to cover Chilton's, and his manicured nails teased with biting pricks into the psychiatrist's skin. Gideon drank in the mild wince Chilton wore. 

"Ah," said Chilton, glancing downwards.

"What? Cause for concern? Are you regretting releasing me from those pesky handcuffs?" Those fingernails perked more sharply into Chilton's hand flesh. Swallowing hard, Frederick kept his eyes on their two hands.

"Did I offend you? With my offered encouragement, I mean, I was only hoping to treat you like a real. Person. Abel. Real people are offered the usual give-and-take, as dictated by polite society." 

Gideon stunted his quiet daggering into Chilton's hand, his shoulders pinching upwards. That acidic arrow had pierced a raw target, even if Gideon saw it coming -- he resented how he was treated as solely his _diagnosis_ , rather than the human being he had every right to be acknowledged as. It was, in part, because of his unfortunate memory blackout, those long gaps of dissociation, that murky psychic fog, that so many of his doctors found it easy to dehumanize him even more than usual. His doctors -- his shrinks, he amended. Not real doctors. Chilton knew exactly where to take aim, it seemed. 

The psychiatrist squirmed, the edge of his desk still poking into his ass. And uncomfortable association, what with these sharp points digging into his skin, and his posture slightly bent to accommodate his patients. The greater discomfort it caused Chilton, the prettier the picture was to Gideon. 

"Real people," Gideon intoned. His released Chilton's hand, and stood abruptly as the other man withdrew his limb from harm. Gideon's reflexes proved eel-like, his body slick and lightning quick, and within two heartbeats Chilton found his ass pained even deeper by the angle of his own desk. Gideon pressed his body against his doctor's, his hands and arms on either side of Chilton's own, a perfect mirror. Gideon's cheek pressed against Chilton's, and Frederick could do nothing but gape wordlessly.

"Does my authenticity as a person rely on you, Doctor Chilton?" 

The words, whispered, hinged on tones of muted anger and excitement. Chilton's chest quivered against his patient's. 

"In -- in some ways, yes, a-actually." He couldn't deny the thrill of confrontation, the extraordinary fuse that Gideon possessed: it had to be symptomatic of anger issues, perhaps the key to his dissociation. Perhaps a manifestation of manic depression, or perhaps--

"Bold words. Do they come with anecdotes? Or are we going to end this another way?" Gideon grabbed Chilton by his wrists, pinning him to the desk; that alone was a sufficient argument against any inclination of a writhing, wiggling escape.

"What I mean," Chilton began hastily. His eyes darted around the room, pleading for inspiration. "What I mean is that, ah, I'm your communicator. Your translator. I know -- I know you, Abel, I see the depths of your humanity. I know it's, how unfair it is, that your identity issues circumvent your natural progression. Your potential. I can only imagine the frustration you must endure, goodness, a man of your intelligence shouldn't be left to rot in--" my hospital, he nearly said. "In society's disdain. And I know that."

Gideon frowned, absorbing Chilton's words. His face edged closer, his chest pressed harder, and his teeth sinking into the cartilage of Chilton's nearby ear, gentle enough only to curb the draw of blood. Go on, he whispered, his voice an unusual monotone.

"And I know," Chilton breathed. His blood, halted from pouring out from puncture ears, soon flooded downwards instead. "That. It's unfair, Abel, I do, but you need me as your communicator -- to clarify your condition, your identity, not only to yourself, but -- but to the rest of the world! I can make them take notice!" His exhaled the last words and his thighs quivered against Gideon's pair. It was impossible to hide the pressure growing between those thighs, the very pressure that pressed back against Gideon's body. Abel Gideon took note, the thought accompanied by a curious arch of his eyebrows, and smirked. 

"Interesting," he said, though he didn't elaborate upon _what_ he found so interesting. It likely wasn't Chilton's defense. Gideon slowly eased from Chilton, his eyes burning focus on the other man's face as he did so.

"-- And," said Chilton, clinging to some showcase of dignity. "That is why you must rely on me. In some ways."

"A compelling argument," replied the former surgeon. "Which we can discuss more. Why don't you pour us both a glass? We deserve it, we've both been acutely encouraged." Gideon took a step away, then another, before leaning back against one arm of the seat he had assumed. He grinned, noting the rosy blush over Chilton's face, the pale puncture of teeth along the ear cartilage. The bulge hinting between Chilton's legs. His eyes flickered up and downward, and his mind calculated: Chilton had a point. Gideon, upon murdering his family, inevitably marginalized himself from the society he knew. And the fact that he couldn't recall a decent chunk of his own past only allowed for psychiatric gold diggers to warp his natural resources for their own glory. Gideon had endured enough of that, and now he was ready to capitalized on what Chilton promised: actualization of his own memories. The puzzle of his past, put back together again. 

"All the king's horses and all the king's men, Doctor Chilton."

Chilton glanced from Gideon's hands to his face, his mouth pursed as he passed over a shot of whiskey in a cleanly cut glass. 

"I was never one for nursery rhymes, Abel. And please, I insist -- you must call me Frederick."


	3. Wronged You (part one)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chilton grows more aggressive in his subliminal suggestion to Abel Gideon.

"Cold."

"Come again?"

"It's _cold_."

Frederick Chilton glanced over to the corner of his operating room, where his complaining patient was strapped to what equated to a metal gurney, and one complete with interlocking metal cuffs along the side of the edges. Chilton had designed it himself, and the modification work was easily soldered Matthew Brown. Good man, that Matthew Brown -- or, rather "good" as Chilton was eager to describe the word, which typically translated into "obedient". Brown wasn't in a position to think for himself, much less question the Chief of Staff, not with a psychiatric past like what he had. Such molded the boy into the ideal employee, really, and he was remarkably useful with his hands. Chilton held his spared glance at the prone Gideon for a moment more, before curling his upper lip into a practiced sneer. 

"I imagine it would be chilly, Abel, as this is your first time warming into the chair, isn't it?" _Chair_ , Chilton had called it, which was a generous term used only in public company. He had, in his notes, referred to the newly minted contraption as his _containment center_. Sterilized, brutalized bureaucratic overtones -- Chilton could brandish language like a weapon. He coolly observed Gideon wiggling his hips, probably due to discomfort. The patient was garbed in only his navy blue jumpsuit (without shoes or... anything else), and even that was unbuttoned midway down the sternum. The silver metal of the gurney lacked any usual comfort of fabric; there was no cotton-and-nylon elastic to ease in a resting body. The linking cuffs were teeth around around the oval edge, connected to one another until one link grasped around Gideon's wrist, or ankle, devouring that flesh from sight. He wouldn't be able to move his palms much, nor his soles, and Chilton considered _that_ to be a pretty picture indeed. It was as if Gideon himself was fitted to an oyster-pale cameo.

He knew the tactic to be aggressive, but Gideon's more recent behavior had warranted it. Abel had been in his care for nearly half a year now, and he had progressed so well; the former surgeon was so notably _compliant._ He possessed grace (and manners) quite foreign to the usual neurological baskets that Chilton routinely observed and contained. Gideon had fit the profile to a greater design -- _had_ , being the operative word. Since under Chilton's informative guidance, Abel Gideon began to recover glimpses of memory. The smile of his wife. The alibi-soaked moments of perhaps when an alleged serial spree _had_ to have happened, must have happened if Gideon was more than a mere mass murderer. Maybe. Possibly. Memory only winked within Abel's mind. It was nothing too concrete, no, and he hadn't recalled anything that was too contradictory to the paint that Chilton had already stroked onto that canvas; but it was inconvenient, and if Gideon continued to recall more glimpses from his most lethal dissociative episode and the _lack_ of other murders, if he began to question Chilton more vigorously, then Chilton would be forced to find another candidate to be his Chesapeake Ripper. It was an unappealing last resort. The whispers that had _followed_ him since those five months ago, since the FBI had practically begged him to profile the Ripper and all for naught -- that all plagued the psychiatrist. He had not caught the Ripper, and he could feel the doubt that dogged his shadow, whenever he left a room. Abel Gideon was his chance to prove everyone, every single smug academic, perfectly wrong -- and if Chilton had to mold his halfway amnesiac patient to _become_ the Ripper for lack of the authentic one, then so be it. 

Hence why they were in this cold, private therapy room. Hence why Chilton _needed_ Gideon to cooperate.

By any means necessary. 

"You know," said Gideon in his familiar drawl. "I don't _think_ you asked me here to play Chatty Cathy. Frederick. Don't _really_ know why you had to alter my usual schedule at all."

Chilton strolled to his strapped-down patient, his sharper smirk cutting against his teeth. The psychiatrist extended two fingers slowly, gently, to Gideon's forehead, and lightly stroked back a few stray locks. Brush, canvas. Now for the paint. 

"Your inquisitive nature never did abandon you, did it, Abel?" 

Those two fingers soon became a fledgling caress. Gideon's hip twitching ceased, but then he wiggled his toes in quiet defiance. He watched Chilton carefully, with eyes that neither narrowed nor widened. 

"Good," said Chilton, continuing his monologue without care for input. "We must examine what pieces of your identity we know are true, because those will become your only honest hints of recalling who you really are, who you always have been." 

It was a heavily emphasized segment, and Chilton thought for a taunted moment that he pushed the _validity_ agenda too hard. Gideon didn't offer any contrary opinion, but then again, his temperament frequently gravitated towards introspection. A lack of protest didn't necessarily mean compliance. In effort to distract from any heavy-handed wording, Chilton's stroking hand found its pathway down Gideon's opened jumpsuit. At that -- the room went still. Gideon's eyebrows both rose, but his mouth didn't squish into an angry tremble. It was, if anything, vaguely amused. Chilton smeared his gaze all over Gideon's face, monitoring his finger rubbing and prodding to Gideon's discernible facial twitches. His middle finger blindly rubbed over a perky nipple -- room temperature was still cold, of course -- and Chilton rubbed over that pluck of pink skin, rubbing back and forth. Gideon's toes had stopped wiggling, and his sudden current of concentration bore back into Chilton. The psychiatrist took note of Gideon's breathing, which had become quicker and shallow. 

"Don't you think so, Abel?"

"Frederick," said Gideon, carefully, as if deliberating each syllable. "What. Are you doing?"

"Consider this a warm-up." Chilton tweaked the nipple once more, before stalking to the other side of the room. As Gideon was trapped in a corner, he was unable to eyeball Chilton's precise movements; he couldn't see what Chilton was up to until his doctor had returned by his side. In one hand, Chilton held a pair of slim, minty green rubber gloves. And the other? He carried a hard, black plastic briefcase by the handle. 

Gideon had been strapped and placed in a corner strategically; Chilton thought such cloistered atmosphere provided a unique intimacy between them. The door had been locked upon their mutual entrance, and the singular hospital ward at Chilton's beckoning stood obediently outside the steel door that anesthetized them from the remainder of the hospital. Next to Gideon's gurney was a small, square table, which Chilton used to prop up his suitcase. He unlatched the hinges with a resounding _click_ , and slowly opened his wares. Neatly set into the case, cushioned by plush fabric, was a contraption that had been modified from an outdated electroshock system. Another creation of Matthew Brown's, something special that Chilton had commissioned -- off the books, of course. He took a small, silver clamp between two fingers, and showed it to patient Gideon. 

"Do you remember what it was like? Murdering in your rounds of three?" Inquired Chilton, his therapeutic voice soft in his mouth. Gideon didn't respond, not verbally; his eyes flickered between the clamp and Chilton's face. Chilton, with his free hand, smoothed over Gideon's chest again, and pulled down the jumpsuit's zipper to Gideon's naval. He attached the clamp to the left nipple without warning. Gideon winced, sucking in a harsh breath of air between clenched teeth, but he did not act dismayed. That, thought Chilton, was to the former surgeon's credit. Another clamp twinned to Gideon's other nipple, and the two bit down against Gideon's pink flesh in brutal symmetry. 

"What's the matter, Abel? Still cold?" Chilton pulled on one rubber glove, and then the other, before offering his patient a frostbitten smile. 

"Don't remember," muttered the prone patient.

"What?" Chilton, who had turned his attention to the briefcased mechanism, glanced back. 

"Don't remember killing all those people, Frederick, just don't. You want me to, I can see that. You want me to quite badly." 

"Oh, Abel." Chilton spared a pitying grimace, complete with a smile that mushroomed his top lip. "It's a tragedy, when your dissociative episode did to your brain. Punctured it with neurological black holes, it's just such a shame what can happen to brilliant minds. But that's why I'm here, now, with you. We will make you remember, Abel." 

Chilton, one forefinger extended, snapped a golden button on top the modified switchboard. The contraption hummed with energy, practically buzzing with electrified promises. He had four hours of two fully charged, brutal industrial batteries already installed -- but if Abel took longer in his recollection, Chilton could always resort to the extension cord option. The only two people who would be observing the electrical bill in finances was, of course, himself and his trusted accountant. 

"Are you sure about this?" Gideon winced, already anticipating. Chilton smiled, and nodded in response. 

And then he he dialed to twelve volts. 

Gideon jerked immediately, writhing, yelling out. His wrists and ankles were pincushioned tightly to the gurney, which only frustrated his thrashing. Chilton watched, mesmerized, for nearly ten seconds -- before he noticed the blood spattering from Gideon's mouth. The dial moved back to zero.

"Ah," said Chilton, taking a navy-with-gold-trim handkerchief from his double-breasted jacket's front pocket. He dabbed at Gideon's mouth, gently shushing the low moans that ebbed out of it. "We forgot the mouth guard, didn't we? See how important it is, Abel, to remember? See how essential?"

If Gideon had not bitten his tongue when appropriate before, he surely had now. Chilton's smile only deepened, tightening his lips. From the briefcase, he pulled a rubbed bit, and set it aside. He asked Gideon to open wide, so he could supplant the protection, and patted his patient's cheek to assess implementation. 

"Very good," said Chilton. "Perhaps you'll be more receptive to a lower voltage, to begin with." 

Tucked in neatly beneath the electrifying therapy device was slim black folder, full of copied paged detailing the Chesapeake Ripper's victims. As Chilton moved the dial to seven volts, as Gideon's body spasmed with electricity, Chilton would read aloud these details -- in segments. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds. Twenty-five seconds. 

"You're doing so well," he said, his gloved fingers stroking Gideon's face as the man buzzed with pain beneath him. "Are you ready for the next step?"


End file.
